


The Ticking Clock

by DeafBubblegum



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:22:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28650477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeafBubblegum/pseuds/DeafBubblegum
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

The clock ticks.

I cannot say I know how clocks work, just that they tell the time and that, some models, tick. They're obviously the silent ones, the digital ones but when asked what sound a clock makes, everybody has the same answer. Tick Tock. Each sound is a second passing, with a second pause in between. The tock follows the tick, it always does.

There is a clock in my bedroom, but I cannot find it, no matter how hard I look. I’ve emptied the room several times and inspected everything as I put them back in. Even in an empty room, there is still a clock.

The clock ticks.


	2. Chapter 2

I took apart the walls and there is still no clock that I can see. But there is a persistent ticking. If it wasn’t the fact that others have also heard it, I would be thinking that it’s all in my head.

Here, as I lay on my bed, empty walls surrounding me, I hear an echoing tick of a clock that cannot be, but must. Can there be such things as ghost clocks? I would say that first something must have a soul before it can become a ghost, but who am I to say that objects don’t have souls? Maybe a loved item holds a part of the soul of the person who loved it. But then I have to wonder what kind of clock it is to be loved so much that its ticking is sinking into my bones, that it travels with me in my head and never leaves me alone.

The clock is still ticking. And I cannot sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

It has been many years since I started to hear the clock, and now it’s a part of my life. I never found a clock, but it doesn’t matter. The noise it makes seeped into the house, and now it has seeped into me. I believe the answer to my predicament at the beginning of all of this was to simply burn the house down.

I found one answer though. I found a letter. I don’t know when I found it, if I can even say that I found it, only discovered it. It was on the pillow of my bed. Old, wrinkled, paper yellowed out and it looked as though I wasn’t going to figure out what it said, but the ink looked… old and fresh at the same time.

“The clock,” it started, “is a thing of beauty. The wood is dark, inlaid with gold, real or not I do not know, and the face is pure white. I cannot figure out what it is made of, only that it simply reminds me of the moon. The hands look basic at a glance, but a closer look reveals that it is engraved with such a precision that I never knew it existed. This is truly the one.”

The letter ends there. There is no sign-off, nor does the letter say who it is meant for. I cannot really say it’s a letter. A note? A note with an intended reader, but I don’t know who it is. A part of me feels like it was intended for me. It’s older than me. I can’t say how I know that. 

It feels like the remnants of an old soul.

The clock was once real. I can say that much. But the ticking remains in the walls, in the floor, the roof and in the simple foundations of the house. My house. And now it has seeped into me.

The clock keeps ticking.


	4. Chapter 4

I am known as the Ticking Man. The clock ticks in me. I no longer hear it in the house, but I feel it in my bones. I feel it tick in tangent with the beating of my heart. I know people can hear it because I hear the children pointing at me. 

“There goes the Ticking Man.”

I don’t think there’s anything about my life that has changed. I am like a clock, in that it ticks, but I don’t hold perfect timekeeping. I have noticed one thing though. A clock has its own ticking to go through. It’s own swings, it’s own moments that it ticks and tocks. When I see a clock, it ticks in time with me. And I feel it ticking in me. And a heartbeat is the tick of a living being.

It’s been years and I couldn’t tell you how many clocks I’ve passed, how many clocks have been connected to me. How many people are connected to me. They still are.

I am getting old now, and I have barely anybody to call a friend. I have a niece, she comes round to help me from time to time. She’s not afraid of the ticking like so many others have become. Even my own sister couldn’t bear to be in the same room as me before she passed away. I made sure her beat resides in me too.

I can feel the ticks and beats of everybody and it's so overwhelming.

But I can feel a very small tick. A small beat. And I look at the face of my niece, and I know who is now connected to me. Except… Not.

Ah. I was simply a container, all these years. No control. Just connections, just ticking, just beating. The true clock is here. And when it is able to hold the connections I have spent so long making, I will become a simple ticking too.

I am the Ticking Man. And my time is ticking down.


End file.
